In a work environment, such as a multimedia contact center, comprising one or more teams of agents, it is desirable to allow the individual agents to track their own performance and compare their performance with the performance of their peers. By comparing the performance of an agent with the performance of one or more peer groups, the agent is better able to determine areas requiring improvement. Furthermore, the comparison allows the individual agents to set and monitor personal goals, such as maintaining or exceeding the performance of a peer group, thereby improving job satisfaction.
Measuring agent performance, however, is laborious and is generally made with historical data. An agent, upon request, is usually given by their supervisor data concerning the activity of the agent, such as the amount of time worked and the number of contacts handled, such contacts including, for example, voice calls and other contacts, such as faxes, e-mail, voice mail, web requests, web call-back requests, web chats, web voice calls, web video calls, and the like. The supervisor typically calculates the desired performance statistics either by manual calculations or by entering the data into a spreadsheet, which then calculates the performance measurements from the entered data. Moreover, the supervisor typically compiles and calculates the same performance statistics for all of the agents within the peer group in order to compare the performance of the agent with the performance of the peer group. As a result, the availability of the performance measurements is often limited by the amount of time the supervisor has available to perform the calculations.
Moreover, even if a supervisor is willing to calculate the performance statistics for all members of a peer group, the supervisors generally do not have access to the data required to make a comparison to other groups. Generally, supervisors are not provided with performance data of another supervisor's agents. Therefore, while the supervisor may calculate his own group's performance, there is typically no means to compare his group's performance with another supervisor's group or multiple supervisor groups, including all supervisors at a contact center or across multiple contact centers.
Therefore, what is needed is a method and a system for providing performance information to an agent in a manner that is readily accessible by the agent, and for providing the agent with a performance comparison between the agent and the peer groups of the agent.